# Please Stand By

The trouble was that Douglas Raymond’s friends liked him too well—but that can be trouble enough!
By Joseph Ivers Lawrence
Author of “Heartbreak Trail,” “Drums of Peace,” etc.

“Turn off that horrible jazz, Adolph, and get WXL. It’s thirty-three on the dial, you know,” said Miss Maria Bascom, proprietor and hostess of Wistaria Lodge. “I’ve had nothing but jazz all the afternoon—songs and ukuleles and organs and orchestras, all the time. Seems as if I’d go distracted! Something ought to be done about it.”

“Suppose you try snapping off the switch,” suggested Henry Caddock, dean of the boarding house, who sat at the foot of the table, opposite Miss Bascom. “That’s what I do when I come into the house in the afternoon and there’s no one around, and Adolph has left the thing running. You’ve no idea how peaceful and quiet it makes the house, and it saves electricity.”

“I had an idea that Adolph kept it running most of the time,” said Miss Bascom in a low tone, as the butler busied himself with the radio cabinet in the parlor. “Adolph is very fond of music.”

“Music?” queried Hubert Quirk, on the right of the table.

“If it isn’t music, what is it?” challenged Mrs. Susan Tredmore, on the left of the hostess. “Some very distinguished authorities claim, you know, that jazz is the logical expression of American life—of the tremendous, throbbing, spontaneous action and spirit of the people.”

“Sure! I guess that’s it,” agreed Horace Sheldon, across the table. “That’s the way life and business look to me, all right. It’s something fierce, believe me!”

“Oh, you take a very cynical view of it, Mr. Sheldon,” said Mrs. Tredmore.

“Who wouldn’t?” murmured the laconic Hubert Quirk.

“And what is your view of such things, Dr. Hillary?” persisted the lady.

The college professor smiled benignly, and delicately touched his lips with his napkin.

“I’m inclined to believe that all these things will adjust themselves. A casual survey of history is—er—moderately reassuring—to those who do not expect too much.”

“I’m so glad to hear you say that, Dr. Hillary!” declared the lady, vastly gratified.

“Indeed, yes! Such an opinion from a professor stimulates one’s faith in the eternal verities, doesn’t it?” seconded the newest boarder, Miss Sylvia Stark, who had come to Port Cardinal to teach mathematics in the high school.

“Mm—Monday night,” mused the hostess, “and—er—the Orpheus Gleemen are on at eight o’clock, aren’t they, Mr. Raymond?”

“Yes, Miss Bascom, eight o’clock,” answered Douglas Raymond, the robust baritone of the quartet to which she referred. “Rather nice program tonight, too.”

“‘Rather nice!’” exclaimed Ralph Atwood, from the other end of the table. “That’s it exactly, Doug. Looks like the radio audience everywhere is made up of the inmates of old ladies’ and old men’s homes. Sentimental stuff! Milk toast and weak tea!

“Gosh! I never knew that all the people were so easy to entertain—if they are! Radio! Huh! I don’t mind hearing baseball scores and the stock market, but I’d shut the thing off right there and let it go at that. What’s the big baritone solo feature tonight? ‘My Mother Was a Lady,’ or ‘Asleep in the Deep’?”

“One good thing about radio, Ralph, you can shut it off,” said the baritone a little self-consciously.

“Can you, though?” challenged the other. “I haven’t noticed that. Perhaps so—if you’re a hermit in a cave twenty miles from nowhere.”

“Sorry you have such a hard time, Mr. Atwood,” said Miss Bascom with mild sarcasm. “You remember we put it to a vote when the set was installed, and you all agreed that if just one boarder wanted to listen in, the others must raise no objections; that is, up to eleven o’clock.

“And I notice that you all sit up together frequently until midnight when there’s something good.”

Rice pudding was served, and some second and third cups of coffee; then the boarders began rising and drifting toward the parlor.

“Now that tune!” said Henry Caddock peevishly, cocking his ear toward the loud-speaker on top of the bookcase: “I was fussing with the dial last night and I found five stations all playing that tune at once; you could not get away from it. Next week it’ll be another tune, but they have to run just one or two favorites to death.”

“Ready, Mr. Raymond?” called Dora Perkins, standing at the foot of the stairs in the hall.

“Sure, I’m coming,” answered the baritone, hurrying down the stairs. “We’ve got plenty of time. Good-by, Kitty. See you when I get home.”

“Oh, good-by,” said little Kitty Granby, a stenographer in the First National Bank, affecting an air of easy indifference, and meeting the sweet smile of Dora Perkins through the hall door with one carefully calculated to be just as sweet and just as feline.

“You know WXL is our own station, right here in Port Cardinal, Miss Stark,” the hostess explained to the new boarder. “And we’re fortunate in having two of the regular staff artists here in our little family. Miss Perkins plays piano solos and accompaniments, and Mr. Raymond is the baritone in the famous Orpheus Gleemen—the wonderful male quartet. They sing three times a week, and Sundays.”

“Which is four times too many,” put in Ralph Atwood impudently. “They are famous in Port Cardinal, Miss Stark, and wonderful in the same town. To the big radio audiences out on the air, they’re one of the things that fill in; folks can listen to ’em when they’re too lazy to get up and shut off the switch.

“Takes all kinds to make a program, I guess. Every radio station ought to be limited to about three hours a day; we might get something good once in awhile.”

The men lighted up pipes, cigars, and cigarettes, and gallantly waited for the women to dispose themselves about the radio end of the parlor in chairs.

It was Miss Stark’s first evening at Wistaria Lodge, and she grew suddenly a little more self-conscious, then fidgety, and finally produced a little tortoise-shell cigarette case.

“Are there—ah—any objections, Miss Bascom?” she inquired of the hostess.

“N-n-n-no! Miss Stark, we’re quite modernistic here—though decently conservative. We have emerged from the Victorian age.”

She produced a cigarette for herself, obviously to put the stranger at ease.

Ottilie Eldom, buyer in a department store, casually brought forth a paper of cigarettes from the handbag in her lap.

“I don’t know much about Victorian ages or any other kind,” she said in her habitual, half-sullen, half-droll manner, “but I’ve been smoking fags for ten years; so don’t get fussed on my account, Miss Stark.”

“You started smoking as a mere child, dear!” exclaimed Etta Upham, the beauty specialist.

“Thanks, awfully, old bean!” returned Miss Eldom. “Yes, it was when my mother was passing me off as sixteen—about the time that horseless buggies were coming in. You remember!”

“No, I don’t remember!” snapped Etta, flushing. “Thank the Lord I’m no older than I am!”

“You should be thankful for that, dear,” agreed Ottilie.

“How about the movie, Kitty?” Ralph Atwood asked the little stenographer. “It’s rotten, as usual, but we’ll escape the radio.”

“Thanks very much, but I think I’ll stay in tonight.”

“How about coming with me, Kitty?” broke in Hubert Quirk. “The show’ll be just as rotten, but you look well walking with me; we’ve got style.”

“No, thank you.”

“Wise kid!” murmured Felix McMasters, the irrepressible. “You knew I was going to ask you, Kitty! You get the show, ice cream, and a taxi home. There’s a new line that runs the mile limit for thirty-five cents. Get on your coat an’ hat.”

“No, thank you,” said Kitty, and her eyes snapped a little, and her little sensitive chin seemed to quiver slightly. “I said I thought I’d stay in tonight.”

“Yeh! The Orpheus Gleemen are on the air!” jeered Ralph.

“And what if they are?” challenged Kitty angrily.

“I’m not taking any blame either way,” said Ralph. “They’re on the air, and I don’t know any way of taking ’em off. But it’s too bad to think any one has to sit here and listen. Dora giving Doug the glad eye as he comes downstairs, and sparking with ’im all the way to the studio—it’s a two-mile walk, isn’t it? And all the way home again, too!

“Any one would think you’d show some independence, Kit, and have a little fun yourself. You don’t get a thing, sitting home and moping over a guy like Doug. I never knew any o’ these male nightingales that weren’t crazy about themselves—an’ you fool flappers play right up to ’em and make ’em a blame sight worse!”

Kitty got up in a rage and flounced across the room, taking a seat by the middle-aged Horace Sheldon, proprietor of a down town cigar store. Mr. Sheldon patted her small left hand with paternal solicitude, and when he quietly made some effort to retain his hold on the hand, she jerked it away and seemed perilously close to tears of mortification and anger.

“There! There they are!” exclaimed Miss Bascom, hushing the company with upraised forefinger.

II.

“You will be entertained,” the announcer at station WXL was saying, “by the justly popular male quartet, the Orpheus Gleemen, singing exclusively for station WXL and affiliated stations. As their first number on this evening’s program, our distinguished vocalists will render their own arrangement of the ever-popular ballad ‘Mandalay,’ Miss Dora Perkins at the piano.”

“Listen to the dear boys!” growled Ralph Atwood. “You know how it runs—‘Where there ain’t no ten commandments and a man can raise a thirst.’ And they’re all front-row Christian Endeavorers and white-ribboners. They think ginger ale is a low-down wicked stuff, ’cause bad men mix highballs with it.”

“Charming!” observed Miss Stark, at the end of the quartet’s first number.

“Not bad—not at all bad,” agreed Dr. Hillary.

The announcer said that Mr. Douglas Raymond would sing a group of songs, and the hostess clapped her hands softly.

Strong, resonant tones poured from the loud-speaker:

“From the desert I come to thee,
On my Arab shod with fire—”

“Now just imagine Doug Raymond hitting it in high across the desert on anything shod with fire!” jeered Ralph. “Why, he’d beat the Prince o’ Wales to a flop if he tried to ride a sawhorse. These big romantic yells always give me a pain.”

“Sh—please, Mr. Atwood,” implored the hostess.

Douglas Raymond sang his second song, “It was a Lover and his Lass.”

“There!” declared Ralph, after keeping quiet through two verses, “I’ll say that the boy’s hit his stride; that’s about the kind of stuff for him—Philadelphia cream cheese, with strawberry jam on the side. And did you hear little Dora stub her toe on the piano? She can’t keep her eyes on the music or the keyboard when Doug is singing love songs.”

“Lucky they got chaperones an’ things in the studio!” chuckled Felix McMasters, grinning at Kitty Granby.

“These frightful teases are trying to bother you, Kitty,” said Miss Bascom. “Don’t you mind them at all, dear.”

“I didn’t hear what they said,” lied Kitty bravely.

“Two charming songs, charmingly rendered!” declared Mrs. Tredmore, giving the light-minded youths a glance of lofty disdain.

“Oh, quite!” agreed the new boarder effusively. “You may tell your friend Mr. Raymond, dear Miss Granby, that I got a definite—er—a really authentic spiritual message from his work. Lovely voice!—and real feeling. He has temperament. He should go far. You needn’t hesitate to tell him so, Miss Granby.”

“Oh, thank you, Miss Stark,” said Kitty, blushing vividly, “but Mr. Raymond is—er—why, just a—just one of my friends—here in the boarding house; that’s all.”

“Dear child!” purred Miss Stark, who obviously had reached thirty, “you are so sweetly naïve! I hope you and this agreeable young man with the splendid voice may always remain—oh, very good friends!—and that you may both attain your hearts’ desires. There! You see, I’m in quite a romantic mood as a result of all this perfectly inspiring music. Oh, the radio is priceless! How did we ever live without it!”

“Hope you got all that, Ottilie,” mumbled Ralph to Miss Eldom. “Did you get an aw-thentic click out of Doug’s howls? Me—I’m all lit up on the romantic stuff. Let’s go out on the porch and hold hands. And to think Doug Raymond gets real money for that stuff!”

“Too bad you can’t get real money for making a fool of yourself, Ralph,” said Ottilie. “You’d have more cash than Henry Ford!”

“Click!” gasped Ralph, slapping his jaw. “That registered all right! And to think I offered to kiss you once, out in the wistaria arbor.”

“Don’t mention it; I’ve been trying to forget and forgive. I was disillusioned in love years ago, when you were in kindergarten, young man; and I’m no cradle snatcher.”

“Reckon I’ll say good night, Miss Bascom,” murmured Henry Caddock. “Got some writing to do upstairs, and I’ve got about all the romance I can stand for one evening, I guess.”

Horace Sheldon, next in line of seniority, yawned and decided to stroll down town and supervise the closing of his cigar store for the night.

Lively dance music followed the Orpheus Gleemen’s hour, and the younger boarders rolled up the rugs and spent a half hour in scraping floor wax from the polished boards while Miss Bascom presided and tried to look pleasant and unconcerned.

Kitty Granby refused to dance. She occupied a little warm and stuffy room, top floor rear, and hesitated to go there at once, but she retired moodily to a corner with a magazine and ignored the others.

She was tired, and her nerves were tired. Just as she was thinking that sleep might not come readily to her that night, she nodded over the magazine, and when she sat up with a start, wide awake again, Douglas Raymond was standing in the doorway of the parlor, and the voice of Dora Perkins sounded from the stairs. All the other boarders had gone, and she regretted bitterly that the solitude of the parlor made retreat more difficult.

“Going to the studio in the morning, Mr. Raymond?” Dora was inquiring.

“No, I don’t have to go at all tomorrow,” said Douglas.

“I do. I have to go and rehearse some accompaniments with that fiddler. About ten o’clock. You wouldn’t be walking out that way, I suppose?”

The young man glanced at the shrinking Kitty at the end of the now dimly lighted parlor, and Kitty perceived that his color deepened.

“I—I’d like to—mighty well, Miss Perkins,” he said, “but—I have to—”

“Oh, you don’t have to make excuses!” said Dora quickly with a dry little laugh. “Of course, if you weren’t going anyway! It does seem like an awful walk when you’re alone, though. And you’re such good company, Mr. Raymond. I never gave a thought to the walk either way tonight. Shows what congenial companionship will do for any one.”

“Mighty glad to have had your company, Miss Perkins,” said Douglas in a rather husky voice. “Well—good night, Miss Perkins.”

“Good night, Mr. Raymond. If you just happened to change your mind in the morning, I’ll be leaving about quarter to ten, I guess. Good night.”

“Aren’t you sitting up pretty late, Kitty?” the young man asked, walking slowly the length of the parlor.

“Not so very. I’m going up now, though.”

“That so? I was hoping you might want to sit awhile. Did you hear the program?”

“Yes, we heard it, of course. It was very good.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m pretty tired now, Doug. I guess I’ll say good night.”

“What’s the matter, Kitty?”

“Matter? Nothing the matter with me, I’m sure.”

“Maybe there is with me, then?”

“Oh, don’t be foolish, Doug! I’m terribly tired. Please don’t keep me here talking—about nothing. I’m tired—I’m just good and sick and tired of everything—of this darned old boarding house and this darned old town, and all the horrid, miserable, low-down, good-for-nothing cake-eaters and lounge-lizards round here, and the radio and the movies and the bank—and—and everything that I have to see and hear every gol-darn day of my life.

“There, now I’ve said it—and I’m not saying anything about you—and I don’t care anything about you, and I never did, and never wanted to, and I wouldn’t cry if I never saw your face again. Good night!”

She darted toward the door like an agile kitten, but the dumfounded Douglas literally blundered into her way, checking her flight. He reached out clumsily to take her hand, but she raised the hand and smartly slapped his face.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried furiously. “And you get out of my way and let me go. I don’t find you such good company, Mr. Raymond; I haven’t noticed so much congenial companionship between us!”

“Aw, gee!” muttered Douglas, staring blankly. “Say!—oh, gosh! I don’t know what’s the matter, Kitty, unless—gosh!”

In utter bewilderment he began vaguely to fear the outcome of the sudden tempest, to wonder what was to follow it. After the extraordinary, ungovernable fury, tears and hysterics seemed logical enough, and he dreaded that development no less than any other that he could conjure up in his disordered mind.

There was still a surprise in store for him, however. The tempest cleared, like summer wind and lightning, and was followed by a dead calm—without sunshine.

Kitty sat down abruptly on the nearest chair and stared at him, dry-eyed, with a certain disturbing apathy.

“I’m sorry,” she said evenly. “I’m terribly sorry I made such a fool of myself, and such a scene. I suppose some of them upstairs heard it. I suppose she heard it.”

“But can’t you tell me, Kitty?” he implored miserably. “Gosh!”

“Nothing to tell, Douglas. It’s my nerves, I suppose. I guess I ought to get away from here—everything is so hateful to me.”

“I didn’t know that—er—that I was.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose it’s your fault,” she sighed. “But we—we could never get along, Douglas. I’ve been thinking things over a good deal. I thought I liked you pretty well; you know that, of course; but I’m afraid it was just because you’re such a good-natured, kind sort of a boy. There surely isn’t anything bad about you, but—”

“You’d better go right on,” he said grimly. “I might as well know everything right now.”

“We ought not to let things go any further, Douglas, because we might regret it all our lives. I’m a little bit afraid you’ve never grown up, and that you never will grow up. Seems to me you’re satisfied just to sing a song and have people say that it was fine. I’m terribly afraid you haven’t any ambition, Douglas.”

“Haven’t any ambition?” he gasped. “Ambition! No ambition? Why, Kitty Granby, now I know well enough you’re out o’ your head. There’s not any feller round here with more ambition than I’ve got.”

“That’s saying a whole lot, isn’t it?” she observed with crushing irony. “I’m glad you find yourself superior in some way to Ralph Atwood, and that conceited Hubert Quirk, and that idiotic McMasters boy.

“But you don’t begin to understand, Douglas. You think the little bits of unimportant things are great big things. You’re terribly pleased because you can sing for the radio three times a week and in the church exercises Sundays; you think it’s a great honor and a big success, and you’re willing to stop right there.”

“But, Kitty, the manager out at the electric plant says we surely have made a hit. He told me himself that we’d be getting offers from the big vaudeville people, and—and only tonight, he said he dropped into the studio to hear me sing, ’cause he’d got the idea that I had just the kind of a voice for radio speaking and announcing. He said there might be a chance for me to be a regular announcer. That’s the truth!”

“Not really!” she sighed, crushing him again. “I suppose you think you’d be written up in the magazines. Young man started with nothing but a baritone voice, and got to be a real radio announcer, all on his merits without any pull or influence or anything.

“You’d get almost enough money as a radio announcer to support a wife—the way you’ve hoped to do—but, of course, the wife would have to work, too, to keep up household expenses.”

“Huh! That’s it! You’d better go ’n’ marry a millionaire right off. I didn’t know.”

“And you don’t know now—not anything, Douglas Raymond! I’m not a mercenary girl, but if I ever get married I’ll choose a man who has some pride and some reasonable ideas. You speak of being a radio announcer as you’d speak of being president of a railroad or something.”

“You needn’t think it’s such a bum job! Some of ’em get mighty big pay, and they’re famous, and sign contracts like movie stars.”

“How many? Some baseball players get mighty big pay and sign big contracts, but how many? Why don’t you start in being a Babe Ruth, seeing you know as much about baseball as you do the radio business?

“Oh, Douglas, I’m afraid you haven’t got what people call a sense of values. You don’t see things as other men do. If you were a bell hop over at the hotel, your ambition would be to get to be the captain of the bell hops—never the manager or owner of the hotel.”

“Well,” he said sullenly, “I can’t start right in being an Edison or a Marconi, can I?”

“No, you’re not the type to do anything like that,” she said witheringly. “You do start things, but never finish them; you’re too easily led off the track by all the things you see around you.

“You started as a pretty fair singer, and if you really wanted to do that sort of thing you ought to have worked with all your might to be a Caruso or a Chaliapin; but here you sit down in Port Cardinal—twenty-three years old—and are tickled to death to sing every other night for the radio—a lot of silly songs, and you have no further plans, Mister Raymond—except to be a radio announcer!”

“Gee! I never heard you carry on like this before!” he groaned. “How do you know what’s going on inside my head, Kitty? You must admit I never go around boasting of what I can do. But I’ve got some mighty big ideas in my old bean.

“This radio stuff is all new to me, but I’m keen about it. No reason why a man shouldn’t dig right in, if he likes it, and get to be the head of a big corporation or something.”

“I know!” she said skeptically. “But your keen enthusiasm won’t last long, Doug. Next time you get to talking of your plans, you’ll want to manage the biggest jazz band in America, or be the biggest chicken farmer in the country, or learn to fly and go out after Lindy’s record. Oh, it makes me sick to say these things to you, but I’m not the only one that can see it.”

“Is that so? Been talking me over at the breakfast table with the wise one, eh?”

“That’s like me, isn’t it?” she demanded sharply. “I didn’t have to talk with any one. I’ve been tortured by this whole miserable lot of frumps and jackasses, the whole evening. The old women and the old maids think you’re all right, but the others never speak of you with respect, Doug. They’re either patronizing or insulting.

“Making fun of your singing—casting slurs on you from all directions—talking about you as they wouldn’t dare talk about the average young man; they don’t seem to have any fear that you’ll resent it, or do what most men would do if they were insulted.”

“Is that so!” growled Douglas, bristling. “Well, I might surprise you and the rest of ’em. I’ll walk upstairs right now and give Mr. Ralph Atwood a sock in the eye that’ll shake ’im loose from his dollar-an’-a-half necktie. By—golly!”

“Oh, why don’t you swear, if you feel like it? You might let out one good honest damn at least, and I’d have more respect for you, Doug Raymond!”

“Why, Kitty Granby!” he gasped. “My good grief! You do just about hate me, don’t you? Say, is that the way folks feel about me? Do they think I’m just a poor piece o’ cheese, just because I sing for a living and don’t act like a hard-boiled pug around the house? I’ve tried to be decent to people, but I guess it don’t pay, at that! Hell!”

“That’s pretty good,” she remarked with a bored smile, “but it was rather forced. Don’t swear on my account. And I don’t think Miss Perkins would like it, either. She thinks very well of you, I’m sure, just as you are. When two persons meet who are thoroughly congenial, they should cultivate each other’s society.”

“Hah! So, Kitty Granby! It is because you—it’s just because I—because Miss Perkins said—well, about walking—and on account o’ my being polite to—Miss Perkins only meant to say that—”

“What,” she demanded acidly, “are you trying to say?”

“You’re jealous!” he announced heavily.

“You lie!” she flared back at him, and a sob choked her. “I couldn’t be—jealous of anything I despised, could I? You and Miss Perkins are made for each other! She’s a brainless baby doll. She’s a thousand times prettier than I am—thank God!

“I wouldn’t be seen out with her big black googly eyes, and her vanishing-cream complexion and cherry lips. I’m glad I’ve got little eyes and a big mouth, and a pug nose, and mouse-colored hair. And I’m glad I can’t play the piano or sing. Maybe I’ve got brains, though, if I haven’t anything else.”

“Oh, Kitty, please calm down and let’s talk this thing over,” he said despairingly.

“I don’t care to talk anything over with a man that’s conceited enough to think I’m jealous of an overgrown schoolboy like him, and a brainless china doll that opens and shuts its eyes. There!

“I don’t intend to run away from this house just because you’re here, Mr. Raymond, but I’ll thank you not to speak to me again. We are not on speaking terms hereafter, and I’d like you to understand that perfectly.”

“All right! Good night, Miss Granby! If you’re that kind of a—a woman, it’s a good thing I found it out in time. That’s all I got to say!”

III.

Kitty darted past him as the bird flits, apparently without regard to angles and turns. She was a small person, extraordinarily quick and agile, and she seemed to make the flight from the middle of the parlor to the first landing of the staircase in three bounds.

Three more might have taken her to the door of her room on the third floor, but unfortunately there was an obstacle on the landing; a shadowy figure rose with a little frightened cry directly in her path, and there was a sickening crash, two screams, and then two distinct thuds as of small, hard fists landing on something soft.

“Glad—you listened—cat!” panted and gurgled Kitty, as she delivered the blows, and then she swiftly completed her flight without further halt or interruption.

That did not close the episode, however. Doors opened, and startled voices challenged the darkness.

Ottilie Eldom slipped from her room, second floor front, swiftly, like a rather substantial wraith and pounced on the huddled figure on the landing.

“Shut up, hussy!” she hissed softly in Miss Dora Perkins’s ear, and gave her an admonitory cuff, effectively shutting off a wail of anguish.

“Oh, what—what is it?” cried Miss Bascom from her doorway.

“Hey! What’s wrong down there?” rumbled Horace Sheldon from another quarter.

“All right, now!” called back Ottilie Eldom in a cheerful tone. “But who let this cat in anyhow? I nearly broke my neck, getting up the stairs.”

“Hm! Sounded like two cats fighting, when I woke up,” growled Mr. Sheldon.

“Thanks for the pretty compliment, kind sir,” returned Ottilie. “Hope you lie awake till morning, just for that.

“It’s all right, folks!” she added. “You can all go back to bed; but don’t let any more cats into this house hereafter.”

“You’re a cat yourself!” Miss Perkins breathed sibilantly.

“And I scratch. Look out!” returned Ottilie, pushing her roughly aside and mounting the steps to her room.

Miss Perkins, white-faced, with black eyes as large as saucers, descended in her bewilderment to the hall. She stood there, wavering uncertainly, a subtly appealing picture in her pink dressing robe of soft and clinging substance, her little feet tucked into tiny satin slippers. Then:

“Oh, Douglas! You?” she gasped, and swayed alarmingly, catching at the newel post.

“Why—Miss—why, Dora!”

“Oh, I’m scared to death!” she murmured, stealing fearfully, all atremble, into the parlor. “I—I heard voices; I thought there was some trouble. I—it was so foolish—but I started to come down, and—and she—who was it? She struck me! And hurt me, too! Oh, Douglas!”

“Oh, come now, Dora, don’t cry!” he mumbled wretchedly.

“Oh, Douglas!” she sobbed, and melted into his protecting arms.

Then the Witch of Endor—impersonated ably by Miss Ottilie Eldom in tousled hair, face flushed with anger, draped in a rumpled bathrobe of dull crimson, appeared again out of the darkness.

“You poor fool!” she muttered savagely.

“Who? Me?” gasped Douglas.

“You!” said Ottilie, scathingly, “and any other man, for that matter. Get upstairs, both o’ you, before I slap you.”

IV.

Four restrained and well-bred gossips lingered at table, after the other boarders had strayed to porch and parlor, and toyed with their little cups of coffee and their cigarettes.

“But I am—frankly—no end astonished,” confessed Miss Sylvia Stark, baring her immaculate soul to the chosen few. “One shouldn’t have illusions at—at thirty, I suppose, but I was so enchanted, Miss Bascom, when I joined your little family, to find such good fellowship, such obvious accord. It was quite Utopian—really!

“And now, so soon, to find these lovely young persons all fallen out—eating with downcast eyes, darting black looks about the table generally, and sighing like furnaces—as Shakespeare would say.”

“It’s too awfully bad!” murmured the hostess. “We have trials—yes, trials, from time to time. But we were such a happy family! Kitty is the sweetest child. If I were—er—married, you know, and had a daughter, I should want her to be like Kitty.

“And Douglas Raymond—oh, quite adorable! A little immature, a little impractical and visionary, but such a good and wholesome lad. I suppose it was inevitable that a discordant note should sound; the little idyll could not be prolonged forever. Miss Perkins is charming, in her way, but—oh, such a different type, you know.”

“I had a feeling,” said Mrs. Tredmore, “when Miss Perkins came here, about a month ago, that—oh, you know! a sort of intuition—that another element had entered. Well, I sensed something inimical to our peace and harmony.”

Dr. Hillary reflectively polished his glasses, half smiling to himself over his musings.

“A little cosmos!” he murmured gently. “Wherever two or more persons are gathered together there you have a little world, with all the elements and factors of existence functioning in an area circumscribed. Laboratory specimens, one might say, but displaying to the student and observer all the phenomena of nature and the universe.”

“Fascinating!” breathed Miss Stark.

“The history of man is reënacted,” continued the professor. “Eternal Eve, eternal Adam—and the eternal Lilith!”

“Lilith!” sighed Mrs. Tredmore contentedly. “Isn’t it strange that the name flitted through my thoughts the first time that I met Miss Perkins here? Oh, pray, don’t misinterpret my meaning!”

“I comprehend your meaning—perfectly, Mrs. Tredmore,” said Miss Stark. “Miss Perkins is really quite a charming person—and intelligent, and talented—an artist who has obviously enjoyed success of a sort; but—her lovely eyes—a little hard? The beautiful mouth—a little sensuous? Her quite too perfect hands—the long and tapering fingers of the artist—are they not—er—”

“May we say, the least thought predatory?” ventured the professor.

“The word was on my lips!” exclaimed Miss Bascom with glowing satisfaction. “And yet, I tell you, I’m quite fond of Miss Perkins. She can be very sweet and winsome; there’s something very likable about the girl.”

“Say, folks!” called Ralph Atwood from the parlor door, “don’t let me bust up your committee meeting, but the Orpheus Gleemen are on the air—or will be in a minute. It’s nothing for me to get excited about, but Miss Bascom’s pretty keen about ’em.”

“Let us go in,” said the hostess. “We’ve had such a charming chat, haven’t we? It’s these little intimate, congenial moments with really understanding persons that make the life of the professional hostess endurable, I can assure you.”

“And it is hostesses like you, dear Miss Bascom,” said Miss Stark, “that free life in a boarding house from its traditional terrors. Wistaria Lodge is more like a little club for intellectual persons!”

“That’s sweet and gracious of you, Miss Stark!” declared Miss Bascom.

Henry Caddock sat in a little haze of pipe smoke with the evening paper. Kitty Granby occupied the window seat, running over the leaves of a book and affecting an air of quiet abstraction. Most of the other regulars were grouped about the front room, reading or chatting.

The loud-speaker suddenly took the floor.

“This is WXL, Port Cardinal. Again our home-town boys are greeting the radio neighbors. The Orpheus Gleemen present as their first number of the program the immortal Richard Wagner’s ‘Pilgrims’ Chorus,’ from that beautiful masterpiece of operatic composition, ‘Tannhäuser.’ The talented young artist, Miss Dora Perkins, will preside at the piano, giving her usual aid and inspiration to her fellow artists.”

“Beautiful-but-dumb Dora’s getting a boost!” chuckled Ralph Atwood, grinning at Kitty Granby. “She’s been googly-goo-ing the announcer, and she can do that little thing, believe me!”

“Has any one got the new number of this magazine?” inquired Kitty, ostentatiously lifting a periodical from the reading table. “I’m reading a continued story in it.”

“Oh, listen to the music, kid!” chuckled Ralph cruelly. “It might be fair, in spite of the weather.”

“I think they sing quite admirably,” observed Miss Stark, at the end of the number. “And Miss Perkins’s accompaniment was really strong and quite authoritative, I should say.”

“Dora packs a punch!” declared Ralph. “And when she puts her heart into it, get ready to duck!”

“Hm—such quaint and original expressions!” murmured Miss Stark.

“Mr. Atwood keeps us abreast of the times, with respect to the vernacular,” said Dr. Hillary with quiet sarcasm.

The first tenor of the Gleemen sang an operatic aria, and then joined the second bass in a dramatic duet from another music drama.

“How about our star boarder, Miss Bascom?” Ralph inquired. “He’s taking a back seat tonight. A whole hour’s program without a solo from the boy wonder! That’s a wallop at Wistaria Lodge, and I’ll write to the manager of WXL about it.”

The quartet sang two more numbers; then—

“The Orpheus Gleemen’s hour will conclude,” said the announcer, “with what we hope will prove a pleasing novelty to our audience. Miss Dora Perkins, our artist-accompanist, already famous as a virtuoso, will render the incomparable ‘Liebestraum’ of the Hungarian genius, Franz Liszt, as a piano solo, while the Orpheus Gleemen will sing a vocal accompaniment with words especially adapted to the number. We present Miss Perkins.”

“Wow!” cried Ralph. “Has Dora got that announcer by the nose? Or would it be the manager? She’s leading ’em around on a leash and they’re jumping through hoops for ’er! Get that? The quartet is accompanying the piano! The tail is wagging Fido!”

“She played it admirably, really!” remarked Mrs. Tredmore at the end of the solo. “We should be very proud of our artists.”

“This concludes the hour of the Orpheus Gleemen,” said the announcer, “and we hope you have enjoyed it, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience. Our friends, the Gleemen, are always delighted and encouraged by your letters, and I’m sure that Miss Perkins—Miss Dora Perkins, remember!—would be highly gratified if you would express your opinions of her work.

“We cannot hear your applause, you know, and the mail brings us the only assurance of your approval. If you desire to write to Miss Perkins personally, you may address your letters to her, in care of Station WXL, Port Cardinal, and I’m sure she will be pleased and gratified.”

“Who is that guy?” growled Ralph. “That’s a different voice; ’tisn’t the regular announcer.”

“Please stand by for your station announcement,” the voice went on. “You are listening to the program of Station WXL, Port Cardinal, owned and operated by the Port Cardinal Electrical Power and Equipment Corporation.

“This is my first broadcast as your announcer, dear friends, and I’ll admit that I’m a bit nervous this evening, but I shall strive to do better and aim to give you service and satisfaction. This is Douglas Raymond speaking. Thank you for your attention. We now continue the program from New York City.”

“Heck!” grunted Ralph, quite flabbergasted.

“Delightful!” purred Miss Bascom. “And he did so well, didn’t he? But how extraordinary that none of us suspected it! It didn’t sound like his voice, and it wasn’t his usual manner of speaking, was it?”

“He was high-hatting the radio audience, that’s why,” Hubert Quirk informed her.

“The pulpit or platform orator,” explained Dr. Hillary, “has his special diction and manner for the public, often rather sharply differentiated from his everyday speech and manner. I think that Mr. Raymond did remarkably well, for a young man, and without much experience of the sort.”

“Hey, Kitty! Kitty Granby! Come out o’ that book,” called Ralph insistently. “Mean to say you didn’t hear anything? It was Doug Raymond announcing. He’s the radio announcer at WXL now. Get that?”

Kitty laid down her magazine and raised her head, with a little bored expression. She glanced superciliously at Ralph, and met the stares of the others without flinching.

“I heard it all,” she said calmly. “I recognized Mr. Raymond’s voice the first time he spoke.”

“My eye! Oh, well, she would, I reckon!” exclaimed Ralph. “But say, folks! Has that kid fallen hard for dazzling Dora? I’m here to broadcast to the world he has! Or she’s got her lily fingers twisted into his curly hair and is holding his nose right up to the microphone.

“Hereafter it’ll be the Dora Perkins hour, with the Orpheus kids on the side. It’s Broadway or Hollywood for darling Dora, or bust!—bust somebody else!”

V.

WXL’s hour for signing off was 11 P. M., and when Douglas left the studio he found Dora Perkins waiting for him in a little reception room near the entrance to the building.

“Why, you’re still here, Dora!” he exclaimed.

“Did you think I wouldn’t wait?” she asked almost indignantly.

“Well, I’ll phone for a taxi. It’s getting so late.”

“But I’d rather walk, with you, Douglas,” she protested. “I want to congratulate you on your triumph. You were absolutely magnificent! You won’t stay here in Port Cardinal long, after a few big people have listened to you on the air.”

She took his hands in hers and pressed them gently.

“In honor of your début as an announcer, and your huge success, you may claim one kiss—just one.”

He was boyishly embarrassed. Almost he drew away from her, but natural gallantry saved the situation, and he kissed her heartily.

She leaned toward him.

“Are you bashful, Douglas, or—or what? Some men would snatch an extra one.”

He laughed then, and clasped her in a bear hug, and he held her with an arm about her shoulders and kissed her till she struggled and broke away.

“So you can be a cave man!” she gasped. “And I—rather like it, Douglas, when—when it’s you!”

They started for home, and she slipped her arm inside his and let her long fingers glide into his hand.

“What fun we had tonight, you and I!” she exclaimed gayly. “The other fellows—they’re all right, but they don’t count. You must get out of the quartet very soon and let them get another baritone. Announcing will take all your time, and there’s a certain dignity to maintain, you know.”

“Why, you’re a regular little manager, Dora!” he exclaimed.

“I’ll be your manager, Douglas, and you’ll be mine,” she said. “Is it a bargain?”

“I guess—er—it’s going to be a regular partnership,” he said awkwardly.

“Oh, Douglas, you’re a sweet kid!” she cried. “You may stop, for that, and steal another one.”

He did so, and after the interlude they went on.

“If you think my piano playing was a great hit tonight,” she said presently, “we might put on a little stunt next week. I’ll plan a little recital program, and it might be announced in the papers.

“The quartet will sing an opening number, then I’ll give the recital—six or eight numbers, and the quartet will come in with a closing selection. That will make the boys feel that they’re not ignored or left out. What do you think?”

“That would be great!” he agreed.

“Of course you’d say so, but it’s up to you, Douglas. I don’t think you’ll need to ask the manager about it. Just explain it to the boys. Tell them you want to get a little more variety into the program.”

“I guess that’ll be all right.”

“Are you happy, Douglas?”

“Gosh, yes, Dora! Don’t I act so?”

“Oh, I do so want you to be happy!” she declared. “I can see such big things opening up for you. You really needed encouragement and some kind of guidance.

“I do honestly think that little Kitty Granby is a cute little thing, but—a stenographer, Douglas! You’re an artist, with an artist’s soul. If there’s anything an artist simply has to have, it’s sympathy and understanding. Don’t you realize it? And she couldn’t give it to you; she couldn’t understand.

“That was just a little boy and girl affair, wasn’t it? And I hope you’ll never have any regrets. I’m so perfectly happy when I’m with you, and I believe that we’ll go on and on, to bigger and greater things. We’ll look back on poor old Port Cardinal as a short chapter in our book, and little Kitty will—”

“If you don’t really mind, Dora,” he said uneasily, “I’d rather not talk about Kitty Granby. I reckon it was a boy and girl affair, but we might as well let bygones be bygones.”

“Why, of course, my dear!” she cried. “You’re not hurt? You’re not angry with me, are you?”

“’Course not! You understand, Dora. I guess you understand me better than any one else ever did.”

“That’s too sweet of you, dear! You’ll have me crying in a minute—you’re such a darling baby boy—for a great big burly fellow that could crush me with one big, strong hand. I guess the biggest, bravest, strongest men are always the most gentle and simple ones.”

“Simple?”

“Oh, you know, I mean plain and honest and sincere. You’re just like an open book, dear, and you make me love you more and more every minute I’m with you.

“Oh, Douglas!” she exclaimed suddenly, and stopped, withdrawing her arm from his. “You horrid thing, you let me go on in my impulsive way, making a perfect little fool of myself, and you have never once said that you loved me.

“I feel disgraced—humiliated. I’m the most unsophisticated, innocent thing that ever lived, I guess. But you did kiss me, and that means of course—”

“Yes, of course,” he said.

“But can’t you say anything more than ‘of course’? You’d better not take me too much for granted, little boy, just because you always get everything you want. I’m not one of those girls that give themselves away lightly. I never allowed any man to make love to me before.”

“Great Scott, Dora!” he cried anxiously, “I thought you must know how I felt about it. Gee! I should say I do love you. I don’t see how any man could see you and help loving you.”

“Now he’s my dear, sweet boy!” she cried, and threw her arms about his neck.

They were drawing near Wistaria Lodge, and as they stood for an instant, recklessly oblivious to the world, the rays from an electric street lamp fell upon them.

Douglas, more instinctively discreet, drew the girl into the shadow of a great elm tree and, thus sheltered, demonstrated the depth and quality of his affection.

Kitty Granby and Ottilie Eldom came walking toward the lodge, after a stroll in the cool evening air. Confused voices and smothered giggles arrested their attention as they approached the tree, and Ottilie caught the younger girl’s arm and drew her toward the curb.

“Oh, darling, you’re strangling me—you’re smothering me!” cried Dora shrilly.

She broke the ardent swain’s embrace and freed herself, but lurched across the sidewalk and bumped violently into Ottilie Eldom; and the stern and unemotional Ottilie promptly returned her to her lover’s arms with a swing of her strong right arm.

Dora uttered a little cry of fright, but quickly controlled herself and shrank again into the shadow.

“Oh, Douglas, those women will think we’re perfectly awful,” she said aloud.

“It’s too bad,” muttered Ottilie, quite as audibly, as she hurried Kitty along, “that Port Cardinal hasn’t got an efficient street cleaning department; there’s always too blamed much rubbish kicking around.”

Kitty went on, walking rapidly, and passed the boarding house.

“You want to go in, Ottilie?” she asked. “I thought we might take another turn around the block.”

“Go as far as you like,” said the other. “And—don’t you care, kid.”

“Who’s caring? Think I’d care about anything as disgraceful as that?”

“Rotten!” muttered Ottilie fiercely. “We won’t talk about it—but I never did think that fellow was that sort of a pig. I wouldn’t have thought that you—”

“And you needn’t!” snapped Kitty. “I hope you don’t think I’m the sort to let a fellow make a fool of himself or me! Anyhow, I guess there’s a good deal about that man that I didn’t know about.”

“There’s a good deal about all men that you don’t know about, kid. I’m not boasting—it’s nothing to boast about, Lord knows!—but I’ve turned down a dozen of ’em in my time, and the big assembling plant hasn’t put the man together yet that I’d swap my job for.”

The house was quiet when the two girls went in. Ottilie went to her room, and Kitty stepped into the parlor to get a library book that she had left on the table.

She started nervously as some one moved near the bay window.

“I beg your pardon,” apologized Douglas Raymond, springing up from a chair and shuffling his feet clumsily.

Kitty averted her head sharply and hurried to the reading table.

“Say—er—Miss Granby!” he blurted out huskily. “It’s all—everything’s all over, I know, but would it be all right if we were just friends, you know? Living here in the same house, it would be—”

She faced him, head up, smartly defiant.

“It would not be all right,” she replied. “Your speaking to me now is an insult. I don’t hate you at all, because I wouldn’t stoop to feel any such strong emotion toward you. I don’t hate snakes, or rats, or mosquitoes, but I don’t want them near me.

“Now,” she added, with firm finality, “this is a public boarding house, and the parlor and dining room are open for the comfort and convenience of guests. I intend to use them, as I always have done, but if you speak to me, or look at me again, I shall request Miss Bascom to guard me in some way against such annoyance.”

She turned, then, and marched out of the room with military smartness and precision.

Douglas slumped into his chair again, sighed, and looked idly out the window into the darkness of the street.

Dr. Hillary and Henry Caddock came in from a late game of billiards at the Cardinal Valley Club down town.

“Smoke another cigar before you go up, professor?” asked Caddock, stepping just inside the parlor door. “When I’m up as late as this, I don’t care when I go to bed.”

“Thanks, no; cigars are a little heavy for me after the first one. And, as for its being late, I shall write a little on the new chapter of my book before I turn in.”

“Hello!” said Caddock, catching sight of the dejected figure in the chair. “Oh, it’s Raymond. Hm—heard you on the air tonight, Raymond. Pretty good! Is the position permanent, may I ask? If so, I congratulate you, I’m sure.”

“Thanks, Mr. Caddock,” said Douglas, getting up. “I guess it is permanent from what they said. The old announcer is leaving town in a day or two; he’s going to have a job out West. I’m glad if you thought I did well.”

“Sure! You’re all right, Raymond. Well, I guess I will turn in, if you’re going upstairs, professor.”

“Did you—er—pardon me, Dr. Hillary, did you happen to hear me announcing at WXL this evening? If you did, I’d be mighty glad of your candid opinion.”

The doctor stepped in over the threshold and peered at the young man a little quizzically. Caddock went upstairs.

“Tell me,” said the doctor, ignoring the question for the moment, “is this position of announcer at WXL a—a very important one? I mean, professionally, or as a matter of prestige, or even financially. Is the attainment of such a post regarded in the light of a personal triumph?”

Douglas found himself riding in a dead calm, the wind gone from his sails.

“Why, I don’t know, doctor, as to that—exactly. I felt pretty proud, I’ll admit, when the manager of the plant told me I could try it out. He said I did well, too, after we signed off, so I guess it’s just about as good as permanent. The pay isn’t so very much, but it might lead to something bigger.”

“Life is so short,” said the doctor crisply, “that it’s rather perilous to devote oneself to aims that are contingent on something that might happen.”

The young man’s shoulders sagged a little lower.

“But if a feller keeps trying to do his best,” he said desperately, “isn’t there a pretty fair chance for him in most any line? I’ve heard you say you had quite a struggle yourself, sir, getting an education and climbing up to the top. You’re a scholar and scientist, and it seems as though real intellectual men are a good deal like artists—they sort o’ have the artistic temperament, as it were.”

“Nothing of the kind!” snapped the doctor. “My own work and study have always been devoted exclusively to the exact sciences, and pure science has absolutely nothing to do with the artistic temperament, thank God!”

“But may I inquire if you did your best this evening, Raymond?”

“I certainly tried to, doctor.”

“Then I’d give up that sort of work, my young friend, if I were you. I understand that there are many radio broadcasting stations in this country, and I suppose each one has one or more announcers.

“Well, sir, I have heard the names of a few such men who have attained some degree of success and fame. I fancy that their ‘best’ was of a somewhat higher order than yours.

“This evening, in the course of an hour, you grossly mispronounced such illustrious and familiar names as those of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, although you profess to be a musician and should be well informed about the great composers. You pronounced Tannhäuser so that it sounded to us like Tan-howser. Inexcusable!

“Young man, a radio announcer has no right to mispronounce a single word! He stands—in some degree—in the position of an educator, and is responsible to his public.”

“But, doctor!” groaned Douglas, “I’m not a college man, you know. I certainly didn’t know I got those names wrong.”

“In Heaven’s name!” cried the exasperated professor, “does a man have to go to college to learn how to look for a word in the dictionary? It should be part of every announcer’s job, sir, to inform himself in detail—to a reasonable extent—upon every fact that he has to communicate to his audience, and verify every doubtful word or name by reference to a pronouncing dictionary. Then we might have no more announcements of Vur-dye’s Trovatorr or Mass-cag-ny’s Cara-lay-ria Rusty-cana.”

“That would mean,” sighed Douglas, gloomily reflective, “that a man would have to put in most of the day studying encyclopedias and library books, to do his work according to your ideas in the evening.”

“Well, that’s about the size of it,” agreed the doctor cheerfully. “On the same principle I put in a week of constant study and research in order to lecture intelligently on a certain subject for one hour. But of course, you never would be expected to work as hard as that, Raymond; so you needn’t be utterly despondent about it.”

“Well, I’m much obliged for the jolts, doctor. I asked for your opinion, and I got it. I shall think of it a good deal, too. The people here in the house have always been pretty nice to me, and maybe I’ve been fed too many compliments.

“Right now I don’t seem to be quite so popular, and—well, I’m sorry there had to be any trouble. I don’t claim to be entirely in the right, and I wouldn’t say that—er—that Miss Granby was altogether wrong. I—”

“Young man,” said the professor, “I am not prepared, at midnight or any other time, to go into your personal problems or your personal psychology. I was never cut out to be a keeper in a menagerie.”

VI.

“This is WXL, at Port Cardinal,” said Douglas Raymond to the air, “owned and operated by the Port Cardinal Electrical Power and Equipment Corporation. We are broadcasting on a frequency of seven hundred and eighty kilocycles by authority of the Federal Board of Radio Commissioners. Please stand by!

“Good evening, radio neighbors!” he went on a moment later. “This is Douglas Raymond announcing. We are taking and giving great pleasure this evening in presenting an hour of chamber music by the Montezuma quartet.

“Now, friends and neighbors, I don’t believe you really care a brass farthing who sponsors the Montezuma quartet, and the important thing is to jump right into the mighty fine music they’re going to give us; but I think it’s pretty decent of the Montezuma Art Fabric Company to organize this ensemble and pay for its time on the air and all the other incidental expenses, to say nothing of the salaries of such distinguished artists, just so that we music lovers can have sixty minutes of pure enjoyment.

“Like all great public benefactors, the Montezuma Art Fabric Company is very modest and self-effacing, and I’m sure they’d like to have their good deeds carefully hidden like a light under a bushel, but I’m going to drag them right out in the light of day for a moment and give them full credit.

“And I’m going to tell you, too—whether they like it or not—that the reason they can spend so much money for art and entertainment, is that they own and operate those big mills that are turning out rugs and tapestries, drapery and upholstery materials, and various decorative fabrics, after wonderful old Spanish, Mexican, and ancient Aztec designs. If you want to see the art and craftsmanship of people whose taste in music is so exquisite, just ask your dealer to show you the Montezuma fabrics.

“And now! The quartet will render ‘Une Nuit à Lisbonne,’ that fascinating barcarolle by the French genius, Charles Camille Saint-Saëns.”

Among the vast radio audience sat Dr. Hillary, with Mrs. Tredmore, Miss Stark, and Miss Bascom, in the Wistaria Lodge parlor.

“Extraordinary!” murmured the professor softly, while giving attentive ear to the first strains of the music. “I dare say that’s the first time I ever heard a very nearly perfect pronunciation of Saint-Saëns’s name over the radio.”

“It’s a name,” whispered Miss Stark, “that I’d rather write than speak; in matters linguistic, I’m an arrant coward.”

“Mr. Raymond pronounced other names and words with great authority and precision, I noticed,” said Mrs. Tredmore. “And did you mark his delivery and enunciation?”

“Perhaps that accounts for the veritable library of dictionaries and books of reference in his room,” said Miss Bascom. “He must have spent all his savings. There are works on elocution and public speaking, foreign lexicons, and all manner of strange little handbooks and things.”

“Quite commendable, really!” breathed the professor, then raised a hand to turn his ear toward the loud-speaker, thus tactfully indicating that he wished to give his entire attention to the music.

In the broadcasting studio of the Port Cardinal Electrical Power and Equipment Corporation, the radio manager, sitting by the control board, whispered hoarsely to Douglas.

“Say, Raymond, where’d you get that line o’ ballyhoo?” he inquired.

“Was it pretty bad? I took a big chance on rewriting the stuff that the Montezuma people sent in. Their talk sounded like a pretty poor newspaper advertisement—awful old wise-cracks! I’ve been reading up a bit on salesmanship and advertising, and a big strong point is that you musn’t bore the public.

“I think people must get tired of hearing the usual stuff about the sponsors of these hours, and only a few of the big features have specially prepared talk, or a special comedy man for their private announcer. I ought to have consulted you, Mr. Magnus, but you weren’t around when we got here.”

“Hm—well, the Montezuma folks can break their contract on a piece of impudence like that, Raymond—but I must say it sounded pretty good, at that. It’s a toss-up whether their advertising manager will be mad or tickled to death.”

“If you can read my writing,” whispered Douglas, with an apologetic glance at the string quartet around the “mike,” “you might give these few notes I’ve made the once-over and tell me whether to take another chance.”

“Huh! You must be working after hours!”

“I worked all night on this stuff,” said the new announcer.

“I suppose your intentions are good!” exclaimed Magnus dryly, “but we’re not spending money enough on this station, Raymond, to boost any man’s pay a thousand or so a week. This is a shoestring proposition with us.

“But go as far as you like. Big broadcasters have special writers to dope out a line of patter for everything, but we couldn’t do that. Keep it up, if nobody kicks, and—you might get fifty cents more a week after the board of directors has a meeting.”

The somewhat disheartening conversation ended when Douglas rose to announce the next number of the quartet, and the manager went out.

He was back again near the end of the hour, looking anxious.

“The New York station’s canceled the next hour,” he said. “They’ve cut out the comedy for some important political meeting, but we don’t want that up here. What have we got for such an emergency? We’ve got to get prepared for these jams!”

Dora Perkins had just slipped into the room.

“Oh, let Douglas sing some songs, and I’ll play one or two numbers, Mr. Magnus!” she proposed gleefully.

“Douglas? Who’s that? Oh, yes, you mean Raymond here. Maybe we’ll have to. I can’t sing or speak a piece myself.”

“Let him announce ‘Signor Raimondo,’ and let it go at that. He’s got a lot of music here that he’s used with the Orpheus boys.”

“I can’t announce myself,” objected Douglas. “I’d have to hand myself a lot of bouquets, and I’d get so fussed that I couldn’t sing.”

“I’ll announce you!” proposed Dora joyfully.

“Huh!” grunted the manager.

“Oh, Mr. Magnus, don’t you like that?” she demanded, pouting a little and inclining her head to one side.

“Huh! We’ll get a reputation for pulling a lot o’ queer stunts over here.”

“Oh, Mr. Magnus, couldn’t I do the announcing—just once—if I’ll be very, very careful and discreet—please, Mr. Magnus!”

She turned her radiant black orbs on the man, pursed her lips as though they were puckering for a good hearty cry, and he fidgeted and grew red.

“Aw, have it your own way, this time,” he said grudgingly.

Douglas dismissed the Montezuma quartet with some subtle compliments for their sponsors, and then it was Dora’s turn.

“Evenin’, all you folks out there!” she chirruped, affecting a slight Southern drawl and accent. “This is Dora speaking. Dora Perkins—and I’m just as shy and simple as my name. I’m the little girl that plays the piano for you, you know! The great big announcer, Mr. Raymond, has been called out of the studio, and I’m just going to have a lot of fun while he’s away. You won’t tell on me, will you?

“You see, folks, somebody’s got to announce the next feature, and I guess I’m pretty brave to stand up all alone before such a great big audience, don’t you?”

“Cut it! Cut it!” wheezed Magnus. “We don’t want no dog-gone monologue, Miss Perkins.”

Apparently Dora did not hear him.

“And now we’re going to hear a vur-ry distinguished musician and vocalist,” she breezed on, “none other than the great Signor Raimondo; and I know you’re all musicians, so you must know all about him. I’m too little and shy to tell you all about how handsome he is, with his curly hair and great broad shoulders, and great big chest like a bass drum, but you just listen and you’ll hear his great big baritone voice in a minute.

“He’s going to favor us with ‘O Sole Mio,’ right from spaghetti land, and I’m goin’ to play for ’im. That’s some honor for a little girl, don’t you think. This is little Dora speaking—Dora Perkins!

“And oh—oh—oh! I ’most forgot! This is Station WXL, Port Cardinal, owned and operated by the Port Cardinal Electrical Power and Equipment Corporation—broadcasting on a frequency of seven hundred and eighty k-k-kilo—kilocycles. There! I’m all out o’ breaf. Wouldn’t it ’a’ been per-f’ly awful if I’d forgot that?”

“That’ll be all from you, for awhile, sister!” muttered Magnus. “You’re a bird, an’ no mistake! But the next time you get out of your cage let me know ahead o’ time.”

Over at Wistaria Lodge on the other side of the town a hush had fallen on the company assembled in the parlor.

It was broken by Ralph Atwood.

“Ugh—air! Air! Gimme air!” he gasped, affecting to crawl weakly toward a window. “And cut the switch, folks, quick! She might cut loose again. I’m going out—out into God’s great outdoors.”

“Hold on! I’m with you, Ralph,” said Ottilie Eldom, making for the door. “If drooling Dora pipes up again, I won’t be able to go to business tomorrow. My Lord, what are the Federal Radio Commissioners for?”

Mrs. Tredmore raised her eyebrows in disapproval. Miss Stark shrugged her shoulders.

“I’m sorry that we have these demonstrations now and then,” whispered Miss Bascom apologetically, “but it’s evident that Miss Perkins is not at all popular here now.”

“I think she was—excessively silly,” murmured Miss Stark.

“It’s odd!” said Dr. Hillary, “but a number of equally irresponsible persons have made their fortunes—in very large figures indeed—by behaving just as idiotically as that before audiences.”

Signor Raimondo was singing the Italian street song.

“I’ll bet money I know that voice!” declared Hubert Quirk. “They’re passing a ringer on us over at the works.”

“Raimondo is certainly very suggestive of Raymond,” said the professor.

“Really? I wonder!” breathed Mrs. Tredmore.

“How about it, Kitty?” asked Quirk. “Is that the boy wonder’s voice?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Kitty coldly; “I wasn’t listening at all. I’d like to read, if you don’t mind.”

“Righto!” Quirk returned. “I can take a hint without a sock in the eye any time.”

At the studio the manager leaned over the piano, on which Dora was playing the accompaniment to Douglas’s song with the mechanical ease of an expert familiar with popular music.

“He’ll do the announcing for the next song himself,” he whispered, jerking his head toward Douglas, whose back was toward them.

“Pl-ee-ease!” crooned Dora, and flashed dangerous fireworks from the black eyes.

“No—nothing doin’!”

With her eyes twinkling back and forth, from the music on the rack to the surly face of the manager, she made an impudent, but bewitching, little grimace at him; then the full red lips were pursed up suddenly into a rosebud, suggesting this time not so much the approach of tears as an invitation to partake of sweets.

Magnus grinned, with the half contemptuous indifference of a seasoned man of mature years.

Being within easy reach, he extended an arm over the end of the piano and playfully twiddled his fingers under her chin.

“Some little vamp!” he whispered.

She raised her eyebrows reprovingly.

The song ended, and Douglas turned to the pile of music beside him.

“Wonderful, Douglas!” said Dora. “There ought to be a radio grand opera company organized around you, dear boy.”

Then:

“Pl-ee-ease, Mr. Magnus!” she implored again. “Mayn’t I—just once more?”

“Aw, go ahead!” he snarled. “I may get fired for it, but—aw, go on!”

So Dora announced all the numbers for that hour, and as she found many ways to vary and elaborate the patter, it was necessary for the singer to perform but five times.

The evening’s program terminated with a broadcast of organ music from New York, and Dora waited for Douglas to sign off at eleven o’clock. She had been sitting in the reception room downstairs, but returned to the studio as the engineer was closing up the control board and setting things to rights.

“I’ll put all this music away in the storeroom,” said Douglas, and stepped out with the departing engineer.

The manager came back into the room.

“Well, you had your way, kid,” he said, grinning.

“Awfully sweet of you, Mr. Magnus,” returned Dora. “Awful sweet for such a cross ole bear!”

“Bears like honey,” said Magnus.

She laughed softly, but glanced at him with a timid air.

“And could I talk to the folks—once in a great while—just now and then?” she whispered.

“Say, girly, you sure have got a way with you!” he muttered, and came over to her, reaching for her hand.

“Oh, Mr. Magnus!” she gasped.

“Oh, you kid!” he replied, and caught her round the waist.

“Mister Magnus! Oh, you mustn’t! I—oh, you’re a married man, Mr. Magnus!”

“So’s your old man!” chuckled the manager, and squeezed her tightly as he set his lips on hers.

“Oh-o-o—Mr. Magnus!” she breathed, and grew limp, apparently about to faint.

There were steps in the hall outside, and Magnus let her go.

She hurriedly smoothed her crumpled frock and gave a little jab at her hat to set it straight.

“Oh, there you are, Douglas!” she exclaimed with a sigh of relief as the young announcer reappeared. “I was just complaining to Mr. Magnus that I was so tired of waiting for you. But I don’t like to take that long walk in the dark alone at this time of night.”

“You might ’a’ gone home earlier,” said Magnus.

“I guess I’m awfully timid, Mr. Magnus,” she explained soberly. “I never like to be out alone after dark, even in Port Cardinal.”

“Huh! Well, after this you’d better ring for a taxi,” he suggested practically.

VII.

Douglas Raymond, who was habitually a late riser, came down to the breakfast table of the early birds one morning, and there were polite expressions of astonishment at seeing him.

“Say, you look as though you’d slept in a chair, with all your clothes on!” exclaimed Ralph Atwood. “I don’t mean to be personal, of course, but you have that fresh and breezy appearance.”

“I sat in a chair all night, but I didn’t sleep,” Douglas said with a dull and glassy stare at the other man.

“My boy, what a spell of conscience!” cried Ralph. “I get that way, but never for all night. I can foot up all the columns of my evil deeds and strike a trial balance in about half an hour; and I always sleep better for it, at that.”

Douglas was not moved to mirth.

“I was working,” he explained soberly. “I’m going to ask Miss Bascom if she’s got some back room or a corner in the basement where I can run a typewriter without keeping all the people awake.”

“Ha, ha! You’re off on another tack, eh?”

“No, not exactly. I’m a slow writer, and I’m just trying to make up all the continuity for the programs at the studio.”

“Continuity! That’s movie stuff, not radio!” declared Ralph, who was informed on all subjects.

“It’s radio now,” said Douglas. “From the time the announcer says ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ right to the end of the program, he reads all his stuff off a script. And some of ’em have a new script for every program.

“Our studio doesn’t have a continuity writer, like the big ones, so I’m trying to work it up myself. But—gosh! It begins to look as though I’d have to find some way of cutting out rest and sleep altogether.”

A fresh surprise was afforded the boarders when Dora came tripping into the room, but she was bright and well rested.

“What’s hit the house?” inquired Ralph. “Everybody getting wide awake and ambitious!”

“I’m getting to be a busy little person,” said Dora winsomely. “I have a lot of writing to do now. Letters! I think every letter that is written to an artist, or any one in public life, should be answered carefully and conscientiously.”

“Mash notes?” suggested Ralph.

“Indeed, no! No mash notes, Mr. Atwood. Applause! Very honest and sincere applause. Ever since the first night I tried announcing at the studio, the letters have been coming by the basketful. A—a couple of hundred people, I guess, have written to ask who the little Southern lady was. Isn’t it rich?”

Douglas looked at her appealingly, moving restlessly in his chair.

“I’m getting poor Douglas positively worried,” she went on. “Quite a lot of people have written in that they’d much prefer a woman for an announcer all the time. Lots of them wanted an autographed photograph, and some suggested that my picture should be sent to the Sunday papers so they would know how I looked.”

“What fine weather we aren’t having, isn’t it?” said Ottilie Eldom to Etta Upham.

Horace Sheldon, the cigar store owner, stared at Dora with his frank appreciation of good looks.

“Hollywood’ll get you if you don’t watch out, Miss Perkins,” he said. “Better not start broadcasting any pictures of yourself, m’ dear. Ziegfeld’s scouts are on the lookout for the good ones all the time, and we—we need you here!”

“Oh, Mr. Sheldon!” Dora cried, and her face became suffused with sunrise blushes.

Douglas coughed violently as he came downstairs to start for the studio one evening, and halted, leaning on the newel post till he recovered from the paroxysm.

“Great Scott, man! You ought not to go out,” protested Dr. Hillary, stepping out into the hall. “You’ve had this cold a week or more, I’ve noticed.”

He touched the young man’s forehead.

“Ha! I thought so; you’re burning up with fever. I advise you to phone your studio that you can’t come. Go to bed and send for a doctor at once.”

Douglas laughed deprecatingly.

“I’m all right,” he insisted. “Too much midnight-oil stuff. I’ve got to lay off working all night and not sleeping in the daytime, I guess. I went to a doctor and he said that I was trying to do too much and I’d have to quit. But sometimes you can’t quit when things have got to be done.”

He looked anxiously up the stairs, and when Dora came tripping lightly and airily from her room presently, he betrayed a slight impatience.

“We’re going to be late, Dora,” he said.

“Then why wait for me?” she demanded sharply. “Nobody asked you to! Too bad you couldn’t phone for a taxi.”

Dr. Hillary turned away with a shrug, and returned to the parlor.

“Those two might as well be married!” chuckled Henry Caddock. “They’ve started in on the married-life stuff a little prematurely, haven’t they?”

“There’s a certain type of woman,” mused Hillary, “that seems to hold a certain type of man by a system of judicious bullying. I believe they relieve the strain at the danger point by reverting to excessive tenderness to establish the balance. I suppose Miss Perkins is—er—temperamental, as it’s called.”

“What that certain type of woman needs, professor,” spoke up Ralph Atwood, “is a first-class, strong-arm wife beater. Say! I’d like the job of being married to that cutie for a day or two; she wouldn’t have any trouble getting a divorce, and I’d stand for six months in the workhouse—if it wasn’t in Delaware.”

“Raymond’s in really bad shape,” said Hillary. “He might slip into pneumonia in a moment with that cold and his run-down condition. He has just about exhausted his vitality. Quite often a big, robust chap like that goes all to pieces suddenly; he’s likely to collapse while he’s fighting to keep on his feet.”

Some of the boarders were out, but the remaining ones sat about the parlor and listened with obvious anxiety for the broadcasting of the local station.

Douglas was at the microphone when WXL came on the air, and his voice seemed to lack nothing of its usual strength, though there was a perceptible huskiness, and he coughed sharply from time to time.

“The Homeland Singers—your favorite mixed quartet—will entertain you for an hour,” he announced after the usual forms had been disposed of. “This evening these admirable artists will build their program upon the theme of home and family.

“That comes pretty near the heart, friends, and it’s not easily associated with anything commercial; yet I’m going to take a chance on mentioning that the hour is provided for you through the gracious courtesy of the Homeland Architects and Builders, Incorporated.

“That’s about all I need to say. If you want to find out more about such generous friends of the radio audience, the Homeland Architects and Builders will be happy to send you some interesting and informative literature.

“And I would like to add that some commercial and industrial houses of today are not in business solely for purpose of piling up dividends for their stockholders. These friends of ours actually make it possible for young and impecunious people to start life with a real home of the sort that they ought to have. One of their slogans is this: ‘You find the right girl—we’ll find the right home for her.’

“Now the Homeland quartet will sing some very appropriate songs on the theme they have chosen. And you’ll notice that their taste does not run to the sort of thing that’s nothing but sugar and sentimentality. They’re going to sing a special arrangement of one of Mrs. Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’—love! Tenderness!”

He was interrupted by an attack of coughing.

“The tenderness,” he went on hoarsely, “that is not expressed in mere words or gestures, but that deeper, purer understanding that is the real radio of the realm of the spirit.”

“Heck! He’ll have me sniveling in a minute!” muttered Ottilie Eldom. “An old maid has feelings.”

“Please give the Homeland Singers your undivided attention, friends,” the announcer implored. “The message is a rare and precious one—as rare and precious as the spirit of the theme. Life needs so much of that spirit to—to make it endurable—that—”

“Poor fellow’s coughing again,” said Hillary.

“I—I present the Homeland Singers!” finished the announcer somewhat abruptly.

“I’m blamed if I know whether he was coughing or not!” exclaimed Ralph Atwood with uncommon gravity. “Seemed like he was all worked up with his own line of hokum—almost ready to have a good old cry.

“Hello!” he challenged. “What’s the matter with Kitty?”

There was no response. Kitty Granby had risen and walked rapidly to the bay window, and as she stood with her back to the company there was a suspicious little movement of her shoulders that indicated some difficulty in breathing.

“Shut up! You poor fool!” whispered Henry Caddock, giving Ralph an ugly look.

“I must say that Raymond is acquiring a style!” exclaimed the professor. “He has the faculty for absolute detachment—sinking himself in his part like an actor. That might be a mature man of considerable experience in the world, instead of the rather diffident chap we meet at the dinner table.”

“Might it not be, doctor,” murmured Miss Stark, “that the real man is speaking into the microphone? It’s so difficult for us all to penetrate the masks that our friends and associates wear in public!”

“Why, that’s an interesting postulate, I grant you,” answered the professor.

VIII.

In the studio, Douglas found it necessary to sit down while he was not at the microphone, and the heat in his head seemed to increase. He dozed fitfully, nodding, then waking with a nervous start and springing up.

“Gee! You ought to go along home,” said young Felix McMasters, the new engineer at the control board. “Why don’t you let Miss Perkins take the mike for the rest of the time, Raymond?”

“I offered to,” spoke up Dora petulantly. “But he thinks he owns that mike; he’s afraid I’ll do something to it, I guess.”

“I’m all in, Felix,” muttered Douglas. “If I get to sleep here, please shake me up when it’s time to talk.”

The evening wore on, and the last hour was given to the relaying of a program from the principal station of the network.

Douglas fell into a doze that came near to stupor. Felix slumped down in his seat at the board and wished that the hour would pass more quickly.

Dora came into the room and went over to Douglas.

“Sorry you feel so punk, old boy,” she said softly, and ran her long fingers through his hair.

“Don’t!” he said gruffly, starting up.

“Oh, Douggie,” she protested, “don’t be so mean! Have I been cross and nasty? Come, let’s make up, Douggie!”

The manager came in suddenly.

“Huh! Am I supposed to knock before entering?” he demanded harshly. “What is this anyhow? Is this studio run for the purpose of petting parties all the time, or what?”

Douglas came wide awake and turned on the man.

“Seems to me you’re butting in a good deal lately, Magnus!” he cried.

“Look here!” growled the manager. “I want to know where I get off. Has any one been playing me for a sucker? You—bright eyes! What sort of a line have you been handing me?”

The demon of mischief that lurked always behind the twinkling little eyes of Felix McMasters became suddenly dominant. With an uncontrollable impulse the young engineer switched on the studio microphone.

The party of boarders in the Wistaria Lodge parlor heard a jumble of confused sounds. Evidently the static forces were getting into action to destroy the perfect harmony of the last hour.

Then voices came sharply over the air:

“Oh, Mr. Magnus!”

“See here, you two! I’m not afraid of this man’s town—I don’t belong here anyhow. Talk don’t hurt me! Now, I’m going to have a show-down. Come across, Dora Dumpling! Take your choice—him or me! Make it snappy! Do you want a puppy to play with, or a real man like me—like you said you did?”

“Cut that, Magnus!”

“Get out o’ my way, Raymond! You’re fired anyhow! Dora’s the WXL announcer from now on—if she’s playing straight with me.”

In the parlor Miss Stark leaped up with a shrill scream.

“Oh! I heard—I plainly heard a blow!” she cried.

“Yeh. Somebody socked somebody in the beezer!” yelled Ralph Atwood enthusiastically.

“I—I think I’m going to faint,” gasped Miss Stark.

A rattle, a series of clicks, and sweet harmonious music poured again from the loud-speaker.

Miss Bascom got up and turned the switch.

“Really,” she said, “I’m too nervous to hear any more. I’m all upset.”

“Come on, Caddock; let’s take a little walk,” suggested Dr. Hillary casually.

“With you, professor,” agreed Caddock, and the two hurried out with more than their wonted briskness.

“Where’s the kid?” asked Ralph curiously, looking around the room.

“Kitty? I think she ran up to her room,” said Ottilie. “I guess she was scared, too.”

The front door banged again.

“Who was that?” demanded Miss Bascom nervously.

“I don’t know,” said Ralph. “Somebody went out to mail a letter, I reckon.”

Hillary and Caddock took a walk only to the street corner, and there they hailed a taxi. They went directly to the WXL studio, and Hillary sprang out of the cab and ran into the building and up the stairs, closely followed by his friend.

“Gee—gosh! I’m glad you fellers have come!” cried Felix McMasters. “He’s too heavy for me to carry downstairs. He’s a mighty sick guy, I believe.”

“Was there a fight here, McMasters?” asked Hillary, bending quickly over the unconscious form of Douglas Raymond on the floor.

“You can tell the cock-eyed world there was!” exulted Felix. “But this guy’s sick; he isn’t hurt. That feller Magnus was the hurt one! Old Doug here, he handed him a couple o’ fade-aways, and put out his lamps with a single man’s-size wallop. Dainty Dora, she got a taxi and took Magnus home in it. Why? Guess ’twas because he’d just promised her a job.”

“Well, well, let’s get this boy home, Caddock,” said the professor.

The three lifted the sick man carefully and bore him out and down the stairs to the waiting cab. He resisted them for a moment, mumbling incoherently, but lapsed into his former stupor.

As they reached the cab and the chauffeur sprang out to open the door, a small, childish figure ran swiftly toward them out of the darkness.

“Douglas!” cried Kitty Granby piteously. “Oh, Douglas, what have they done to you?”

It was a week later when the attending physician said that Douglas was apparently out of danger. The fever was abated, and the patient rather suddenly became rational again.

He found, as he looked about his room with surprised glances, that some one was sitting beside the bed, lightly holding his hand.

“Why—why—hello, Kitty!” he exclaimed incredulously.

“Hello, Douglas,” she said.

“Gosh, you’re a regular saint—to come here—to me,” he murmured. “I wish I could tell you, Kitty—I wish—”

“I think you’ve told me—just about everything, Douglas,” she said, “while you’ve been so ill here. I think I understand, anyway.”

“I don’t suppose there’s much chance for me,” he groaned. “I’d like to be forgiven, if you could do that for me!”

“I have done it, Douglas. I guess I’ve suffered just as much as you have. And let’s not worry. I didn’t know you meant so much to me, Douglas. I don’t care whether you make a lot of money or not. It really doesn’t matter to me. I’ll—”

“Say, I guess we don’t have to worry,” he said with sudden bright spirit. “I remember now, there was a letter that day. And I answered it—I mailed the answer on my way to the studio—and I didn’t tell—anybody about it, either.

“The Eastern Coast Broadcasting Company offered me three thousand a year—to start with—to come and be a continuity writer and editor, and a special announcer for them. I accepted it right off. It’s to begin next month, Kitty.”

“Oh, Douglas!” she cried happily. “But that doesn’t make any difference with me!”

“It’ll come in handy,” he said practically. “I can’t figure it out, but they said they had been listening to my stuff on the air, and liked it.”

Transcriber’s Note
This story appeared in Argosy, All-Story Weekly Magazine, August 11, 1928. It is believed to be in the public domain in the United States; copyright status may differ in other countries.